Pages of Note

Saturday, April 9, 2011

A conversation

"Do you have any idea what has to happen for a perfectly cut diamond to be set in a gold band? Does anyone who orders one of these monstrosities have a clue what satanic operations have to be executed, how many men's toes must be cut off, how many miles of road laid on tarantula homes in the great sand dune arena of life? Do you know the sweat and lower backaches that must be transcended for that diamond to rot in the colon of the earth and be surgically removed with a blunt machete and then transported in the asshole of a doomed goat to the mineral equivalent of the moon to be cut by men with pastrami breath and crooked dirty fingernails of newsprint filled with lies and buffoonery? Oooooh,"

Here, Oggy reached with both hands of crooked fingers for the mayor's ankle as if to bite it. The mayor hurriedly recoiled and grabbed a coffee mug, adopting a defensive position near the elevator's intercom.

"Let's not succumb to blood!" yelled the Mayor, himself recognizing the Shakespearean quality of his voice when faced with a crisis. It was always like that in the former era of his activism, he spoke from a place in his belly where heroes reside and which only opened for business during the flight or fight moments, warfare between what is and what could be. Was it a fault of government that it proposed to protect citizens from those fight or flight moments? Were civil servants such as fire fighters and police the only ones deemed worth for split second decisions? Did it not weaken the masses to be half hooked into an vein of peace and security? Was deprivation came from this sequestering of panic? The Mayor reached that gate of paradoxes that straightened his toes when the city attorney wasn't looking: Was the act of protecting an act of destruction? Did it cancel itself out like walking to the donut shop? Could you pasteurize mankind? Was it smart? Wait, that's not the right question. That was like asking if you could save more money if you spent more. The right question is if the act of wholesale protection is more dangerous in the long run than Laissez-fair defense? But, wasn't the word Laissez derived from Lazy? Or was the word derived from some German emission? The Mayor didn't know for sure what language the word Laissez was derived from; nor could he say for sure if living in a constant state of peril was an improvement, intrinsically, on the half-coma that the council members sought to induce the masses into. A motto: Go to work, entertain, consume, procreate. flashed before the Mayor's eyes in old English script. Is that our goal? There would be enough peril in the simple activities, probably. Going to the bathroom, sex with someone you aren't attracted to, the threat of earthquake, trees falling in the forest, weren't these enough to keep people enlivened? The mayor believed that the evidence presented by the recent street demonstrations and the violence and sabotage of the power station that led directly to his being trapped in an elevator with a madman was enough to prove that despite the invasions of the philosophy police the citizens of Santa Cruz still raised their eyebrows en mass over more than a sporting event. But that brought the mayor back to his Circle K conclusion which was: If we have failed thus far to insulate the skinny and sheltered masses then why are we trying? They don't need the police any more than the police are successfully preventing crime. The prison, was it operating at 120 or 140 percent capacity? Every prisoner was multiplied by two for each free citizen who was beholden to his expenses. Capital punishment was alive and well except it was disguised as a 50 hour work week at the local restaurant for a dishwasher who had to pay state taxes to support a prison system and federal taxes to support wars. Wait, these periodic retreats to a land of logic ignored the practicality of people being unable to govern themselves. That's the bottom line.

The line above the bottom indicated that Oggy was putting the Mayor's leg down, his eyes seeing a hemp necklace where the Mayor's Achilles tendon stretched between his heel and...where...somewhere around the back of the fleshy knee?

"You...why do I even debate you?" Oggy combed his beard with his cracked fingernails. "Sheltered, meek, blind, deaf! That's you. An Ornate shrew in the virgin forest who learns only the road maps of his particular acre would never comment on that which is beyond his understanding. And that's what's happening here. You are out of your element, Mr. Woodrat!"

"Enlighten me." said the mayor with the "City of Santa Cruz" coffee mug in his clenched burger tongs.

"It would be no different...," said Oggy with stacatto punch, "...or less grotesque....if it were customary at a wedding...a wedding...to exchange... a powder made from...are you ready? The refined pancreas of Egyptian Virgins! That's the human equivalent of what's happening when gold and diamond meet on a finger...it's just as rare as the pubic hair of Haitian Princesses! So why not that? Huh? Why not? What does it matter? For Christmas, why don't you give me a tuft of ass fur from a Scottish eel fisherman? Ooooh Look!"

Oggy playfully clapped his hands to his cheeks and extended his meat hooks in front of him.

"It fits!" "I..." started the Mayor as he thought, Haitian Princess pubic hair?

"No! Don't answer!" yelled Oggy. "Don't even bother to ask me if I have seen these things because I see them everyday. I have some here in my pockets full of magic!"

He quickly reached into his shredded imaginary pocket and flung a handful of invisible material at the Mayor, who shrieked.

"No!" Oggy responded, "Yes! They are the badges of disgust that we've normalized!"

"I..." began a breathless Mayor before Oggy cut him off.

"I know what you're going to say. You're going to suggest I run for office? Right? Well, don't bother."

The Mayor shook his head vigorously but Oggy ignored him.

"The mattress covers and the space shuttle and the cell phone tower. You think magic and I say black magic! You think fairies make those zink plated lemonade nameplates and spinning aluminum alloy hub caps? " Oggy spun his index finger in circles as he traced the spinning aluminum alloy hub cap as it might spin on a Cadillac Escalade. He spun and twirled his finger until he entered a brief hypnotic trance along with the mayor. The spinning hub cap interlocked both their dilapidated armies of spirit and the ravaged troops of their spiderman underroos. Echoing through the elevator shaft, up to the microphone installed by the city attorney to record incriminating conversations between council members and activists was the mantra: Spinning Hub Caps orbit a pubic hair planet. Outside the city hall the war raged between the carnival street people and the blue meanies. Outside, the cowbell of dissent was ringing.